


Down to the Core

by mortuus_lingua



Category: Battlestar Galactica, Battlestar Galactica (1978)
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, M/M, Needy Starbuck, OMG Tiny Fandom, Slash, This So Dates Me, Ubiquitous Use of Frak, Woobie Apollo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-09
Updated: 2012-08-09
Packaged: 2017-11-11 18:30:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortuus_lingua/pseuds/mortuus_lingua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the battle with Iblis and subsequently offering himself for Apollo's life, Starbuck's nightmares start truly disturbing him. He thinks that Apollo wouldn't accept these new realizations, but he underestimates the depth of Apollo's affection for him. In the end, it's just a matter of getting to the core of the matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down to the Core

“He said it was a routine check-up.” Even as he argued it, Apollo realized he had somehow suspected that Starbuck had been fudging the truth. He winced; he needed to be more perceptive. “Are you saying Starbuck’s sick?”

Boomer’s voice crackled across the private channel. If Apollo turned his head, he could see the lieutenant’s viper to his right, star fields around them. “You need to talk to him,” he said in that closed-off diffident tone of voice Apollo recognized as Boomer trying not to play sides. Boomer’s fate seemed to be to tread the fine balance between being both Starbuck’s and Apollo’s friend. It was not an easy job by any means.

“Come on, Boomer. Now I’m seriously concerned. You can’t leave it like that.”

Boomer sighed. “If he figures out I said something, I'm dead, do you hear?”

“I promise. I won’t tell him.”

“Huh.” One eye on the instruments, Apollo could still see the vague outline of Boomer’s helmet out of the corner of his eye; it tilted back, as if in surrender. “He’s been having trouble sleeping.”

In the bachelor’s barracks, that wasn’t so hard to ascertain. Everyone knew everyone else’s business: good, bad and embarrassing. “Over-indulgence?”

“Actually, no.”

The captain took a disappointed breath. “Ah.” He was hoping for an easy explanation. “What then?”

The com crackled. Boomer said, after a long pause: “Night terrors.”

“Starbuck? Night terrors?” Apollo was tempted to laugh at the ludicrous idea. He had in Starbuck’s proximity for years, from academy to Galactica, in boy’s dorms to bachelor’s barracks. Starbuck was never a victim of nightmares, and he would have been the first to deny even the possibility. Utter feldercarb. “What about?”

“Like he would tell me?” The frustration in Boomer’s voice was evident.

“There’s meds for that.”

“Yeah, which only make it even harder to wake him up when he’s screaming,” the lieutenant muttered, but over the private line, it was as if Boomer was talking into his ear. 

Apollo pounced on the word. “Screaming?” he echoed, shocked. 

“If he finds out I told you, Apollo…”

“I won’t tell,” his friend protested. Screaming? He could hardly digest it. “Any particular words?”

Silence. Boomer said, tersely: “I think you need to talk to him, sir.”

Well, frak.

 

Starbuck picked up the line when he called the barracks, his voice low and scratchy. “Bachelor’s barracks; blue squadron.”

“Lieutenant,” Apollo said.

“Uh, Apollo,” Starbuck replied, his voice softer. Ah, others were in the racks, then. He cleared his throat, and added in a more official tone: “Captain. What can I do for you?”

“You can report to my office, and bring your medical file,” Apollo said. 

Only a small pause followed. “Boomer didn’t say anything,” he said, “because he knew what you’d be thinking right now.”

“Give me a centon, sir,” Starbuck replied. “I’m not presentable.”

Apollo seriously doubted it. Starbuck could be drunk, with two women on either shoulder, and losing at a game of pyramid, and he would look as fresh and innocent as a flower. Adama’s son, no matter how perfect his manners, had never learned that particular skill. “Five centons, lieutenant. Let yourself in if I’m in the back.”

He was toweling his face dry when he heard the door slide open. He had kept the head’s door open to catch Starbuck’s appearance. “Have a seat.”

“A long patrol,” Starbuck said, obeying. “Boring as the afterlife?”

“You didn’t miss anything.” Apollo never marveled that they spoke in shorthand almost all the time. He didn’t have to acknowledge that Starbuck resented giving up his position as Apollo’s wingman, even temporarily. 

He emerged, sitting opposite Starbuck at his desk and put his hand out for the disk. Starbuck knew better to give him a resentful stare; Apollo was immune. He smiled blandly, and slid it across the surface of the desk.

“I’m perfectly healthy,” he said laconically.

Apollo glanced at his friend’s game face, familiar as his own, and sighed. “Have you looked at yourself in the mirror, recently?” he asked and pressed the disk into his desk’s reader and scrolled through the directories. 

“What?” Starbuck got up and peered at himself in the head’s small mirror, running a palm over his face, turning it this way and that. “I look fine.”

“Then what are those big blue circles under your eyes?”

“Come on, I’m a little tired!”

“I’d say a lot tired,” Apollo said, glancing through the latest tests. “As in, not sleeping.”

“Boomer did talk,” Starbuck said, doing one of those little reverses he was capable of, from affable and happy-go-luck to dead serious.

Apollo ignored the accusation. “The doc says you’re on sleep aids?”

Starbuck sighed, and sat back down. “Yeah, well. I keep waking up.”

The captain closed down the file and extracted the disk, sliding it back to the lieutenant. “So, what’s on your mind, Starbuck?”

“Sometimes I really hate that you outrank me,” his friend said. “Even so, I don’t have to tell you.”

“Just who the frak will I have as wingman, Bucko? Or do you want me to take up Boomer?”

Starbuck’s eyes flashed at him. “Over my trampled and cold body!”

“Then start talking!”

They glared at each other, and Starbuck breathed out. “Captain, I’ve been having nightmares that wake me up in the middle of the night. I can’t sleep, after.”

“Nightmares? About - ?”

“You know.” Starbuck glanced about the office, patently avoiding Apollo’s scrutiny. “Things.”

“Since when do you have nightmares?”

“Oh, I have ‘em, just usually not this bad. Had ‘em at Academy, even.”

“Not about the orphanage?” Apollo asked, concerned.

“Well, not these.” Something about Starbuck’s tone made Apollo wonder.

“Count Iblis?” Apollo suggested, watching his friend carefully. 

Starbuck started, then glanced away. “Maybe.”

It was like coaxing a wild feline. “Starbuck, just tell me. You know I wouldn’t tell anyone else, and I’m not judging you by the content of your nightmares. You know me well enough to know that.”

His friend looked at him, a slow thoughtful look, not one usually expected from the free-wheeling lieutenant. He opened his mouth, shut it, and shook his head. “I can’t, ‘Pollo. I just can’t.” He ran his hand over his face and through his blond hair. “If you try to order me, you’ll have to put me in the brig.”

Speechless, Apollo sat back. There weren’t a lot of things Starbuck couldn’t tell him. They were well beyond the stage of shielding each other from their own secrets. He took a deep breath, observing Starbuck with a puzzled stare. “Would you, if you could?” he wondered aloud.

Starbuck looked at him; it was a rare straightforward look, dead honesty. “Yeah, I would. You know I would.”

Apollo’s mouth compressed. “Then I suppose I should dismiss you, lieutenant. I’ll change the rosters until the medcenter takes you off of medical leave.”

Starbuck looked as if he might object, mouth dropping open, and then he shrugged. “Yes, sir.”

Apollo sat back, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Something to do with Count Iblis, perhaps? Well, there was one other person involved with them during that mysterious event, wasn’t there?

 

Sheba seemed startled to see him waiting for her as she exited the turbolift, but it was definitely a happy reaction. “Apollo! What a pleasant surprise.”

“I’m glad you think so,” he replied. “Do you have a moment?”

“I could be persuaded to dinner,” she said with a flirtatious twinkle, reminiscent of her old self before the whole falling out over Iblis. Their relationship had done a strange reversal since; she had become much less demonstrative around him; he found himself remembering just how willingly she had allowed herself distrust him and run to a charismatic and unethical stranger. The betting pools on their relationship were more like puddles these days. 

Somehow he could not bring himself to regret it. 

“Then please let me take you to dinner,” he said with elaborate courtesy and walked with her companionably so she could check in and log her patrol stats. 

“It’s about Starbuck, isn’t it?” she asked with concerned eyes. He had forgotten that she was much more observant than she let on. “You have that worried look you get when he’s being difficult.”

That made him sound like a father of an unruly child, he observed sourly. 

He nodded, sighing, and she sighed at the same time, which led them to laugh at themselves.

 

Later that night, under more civilized conditions, he was able to clarify. 

“I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘difficult’,” he reasoned. “He’s on medical leave right now, and he refuses to tell me what’s going on. I’ve seen his files; he’s not sleeping. But when I ask him what sort of nightmares are keeping him awake, he clams up.”

“But you suspect something,” she guessed over her mug of ale, one eye on the menu.

“I think it’s Iblis,” he said, watching her carefully. 

She put her mug back down. “Oh,” she said, and a long uncomfortable pause ensued until the vegetable course arrived. “Well, I suppose it could be. I’ve had some nightmares myself. Oh, not anything too terrible, just remnants.”

“I haven’t,” he said.

“No, of course not. You were out of it during the important parts, silly.” She gave him one of her watery smiles, those smiles that were half serious and half light. Cain was an absolute work of art to produce this daughter, Apollo thought. Half the time you weren’t sure if you should bow in admiration or wish Cain to a lower level of hell. “We really did think you were dead. I kept saying it was my fault, and Starbuck kept saying it was no one’s fault, but I could tell he felt the same. If I hadn’t believed in Iblis, if he had moved faster to defend you, on and on. He did say something that has since stayed with me this whole time, because it was touching. What was it?” She drank again. “Oh, yes, that he’d gladly trade his life to have you back.” She laughed self-consciously. “Everything after that was fuzzy.”

“He said that?” Apollo could not imagine his friend, who was always so wary of appearing vulnerable, even thinking such a thing, much less verbalizing it. “Are you sure he actually said it?”

“As opposed to me reading his mind?” she laughed. “Yes, I’m sure he said it.”

“It’s funny,” she said later, over their main course, “but the nightmares I’ve had aren’t of what really happened, not of Iblis or … that ship. It’s as if my mind constructed something entirely different, a sort of white afterlife where Starbuck and I stand there and look at your body as if it were on an altar.”

Apollo considered this, puzzled. “You just looked at me?”

“Well, we talked to each other, and to someone else, some deity maybe, about your death, and how it was me who should have died.” She sighed and set down her cup. “I think it’s my inner guilt talking there,” she added. “I really thought you were dead.”

“It wasn’t your fault that Iblis deceived so many,” Apollo assured her, avoiding the ‘of us.’ He and his father had never been deceived. Nor Starbuck, for that matter. “And it was my choice, to try to defend you. My choice.”

“Yes, choice.” She mused over that. “Choice seemed to be the whole point of the conversation. I chose, and you chose, and Starbuck chose. That’s our power, to choose good or evil; the higher powers cannot control us if we don’t choose to follow them.”

“That’s very Kobolian,” he noted with a smile.

“Yes, it is,” she laughed. “I know my holy books. But concerning Starbuck…maybe it’s something like my nightmares? I mean, as charming as he is, he’s something of a closed book in the emotional department, don’t you think? He couldn’t just sit down and work it through like you or me. Maybe nightmares are his way of letting some of it go.”

“Are you saying that it’s guilt?” That parsed as even less likely.

“Or realization. He wouldn’t say it, but he thinks the world of you, Apollo. It’s difficult dealing with the concept of mortality, of facing the truth that one day even your best friend is bound to die.”

“Hmm.” Apollo considered that. “Maybe so. But really, Sheba, what am I to do with him? He won’t talk to me.”

“As to that,” she answered with a small laugh, and took his hand in hers as it lay on the table. “I can think of one way that would work.”

“Oh?”

“Actually, two ways. Either win a bet on a game of pyramid, or unearth an old bottle of ambrosa and pour half of it down him.”

He hadn’t even thought of it, because Adama’s son never stooped to play dirty pyramid. Besides which, Starbuck could hold his liquor eight times better than anyone Apollo knew, including himself. Starbuck was a disgustingly civilized drunk.

“And speaking of said daggit,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze and releasing it. “Hey, you two!”

Apollo turned in his chair to find Starbuck and Cassie standing at the entrance, looking for a free table. Or Cassie was. Starbuck was looking straight at them with a strange, empty expression, which immediately lightened and turned into an affable grin. Still, the expression had been there, and Apollo noted it.

“We were just finishing up,” Apollo said. “Care to join us for a centon? Then we’ll be out of your way.”

“Thank you, Apollo,” Cassie said with a charming smile which brightened when he stood while she found her seat. “Starbuck needs real food, and I’m acting on my threats to force-feed him if necessary.”

“An interesting approach,” Sheba commented. “Is it working?”

"Not yet, but I have high hopes," the woman replied, and pushed a menu into Starbuck's hands. "It's either that, or intravenous feed." Starbuck's gaze lingered on the tabletop, and Apollo glanced there, where his hand used to be, but there was nothing.

Was it Iblis? Apollo wondered, more and more, if that wasn't the case. Starbuck told him everything; it wasn't like him to be this closed off from his best friend, unless it involved his best friend. 

"You know," he said, apropos to nothing, "there's this ancient bottle of ambrosa my father let sit around, and it's somehow made it to my quarters." He gazed innocently at his friends. "I think that might be a grand reward for Starbuck if he would eat well tonight."

"What am I, twelve?" the lieutenant muttered, but motioned to the wait-staff and ordered protein.

Sheba grinned into her mug and Cassie gave him a calculated look. He was, apparently, fooling no one, and wondered why Starbuck should be taken in so easily, if indeed he was.

According to Cassie, who messaged him later, his best friend finished his entire meal without complaint.

 

He was waiting in Apollo's small sitting room when the captain came off his shift, looking somewhat mystified. "Where's Boxy?" he asked as Apollo.

"With Auntie 'Thena." Apollo shrugged out of his jacket. "Give me a minute. Make yourself useful." He unlocked his private cabinet, took out the bottle and handed it over. 

"Holy frak," Starbuck breathed in wonder, as he got a good look at the decayed label. "You were not kidding."

Apollo kept half an eye on him as he went in the back, changing out of his uniform and pressure suit and pulling on more comfortable civvies. Starbuck also wasn't dressing up, a look one did not see on him often. Usually a drinking night was also a gambling night, not to mention a socializing night. Looked like Starbuck wasn't expecting much but a whole lot of drinking, which was fine. Apollo was hoping Starbuck wouldn't be able to do anything except wax nostalgic, and perhaps start confessing.

Starbuck was waiting for him, having poured the glasses already, and handed him one. "Death to the Cylons," he toasted cheerfully. 

"Well said," Apollo approved, and sipped while he watched Starbuck knock half the glass back. He grinned as his friend's blue eyes widened. 

"Oh, now, that was a good year."

Apollo took up the bottle and examined the label. "At least 100 yahrens old," he said, squinting.

"You actually stole this from your father? You?" Starbuck wondered aloud and drank the rest off a bit more slowly, sinking back into Apollo's couch and closing his eyes in an ecstasy of pleasure. It was the same look he got when taking the first draw of a very good fumarello.

Apollo watched him, and something inside of him warmed at the sight of Starbuck lowering the first defense. He'd felt honored when he'd first realized that very few people saw his friend this relaxed, and he had never forgotten how rare and precious that trust was.

He remembered it now, even as he meant to break that trust. 

Starbuck licked his lips meditatively, then opened one eye. Apollo laughed, and leant forward, offering a refill. 

"I've already tried it, you know," his wingman said as he poured. "Liquor. I still dream."

"Perhaps you've tried the wrong liquor," Apollo replied. He wanted to start asking why Starbuck wouldn't talk to him, but it was too soon. He sipped and waited.

By the fifth glass he knew his friend was drunk, and only because the lieutenant's movements became very careful as he set his glass down in the middle of a conversation concerning the current betting pools.

"There's a box of fumerellos on how many times a certain ensign has entertained officers in her shuttle."

"Urgh," Apollo commented in a general tone of disgust. 

"Well, I wasn't one of them, so don't give me that look," Starbuck complained. 

"But you'll put your estimate in all the same," Apollo said. It was a side of Starbuck Apollo found alien, but as a commanding officer he had taken to turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the betting pools.

"Of course! No harm, and richer in the end." Starbuck nibbled his bottom lip. "Well, most of the time."

"Oh ho! Do I detect a bit of a pout? What bet have you lost recently?"

His friend glared at him resentfully. "I was sure it was over between you two."

Apollo's eyes stretched. "As in me and who else?"

"I know you don't have that short of a memory. That lady, whose hand you were holding at dinner?"

"Sheba and I? Not a chance!" He was amazed that Starbuck had seen his hand in Sheba's, and then recalled that expression when Starbuck had walked in. It had been strange.

Equally strangely, Starbuck straightened up, his focus entirely on detecting the truth in his friend's face. "Are you saying it's over between you two?"

"Pretty much. We're friendly, but nothing else. Not since..." Apollo winced. He was hoping not to bring up Iblis so blatantly. "... not for a while."

"Huh." The lieutenant sat back again, thoughtful. He picked up the glass and gazed at it. "You sure about that?"

It was like a slap from nowhere, the sudden inward pain. Apollo clenched his teeth against it. "It's a sure deal, Starbuck," he said, and he knew it sounded cold, but it was either that, or start shouting. "Someone ought to profit from my failure of a personal life, so why not you?"

"Now, wait a minute," his friend protested softly, but Apollo was not listening as he poured himself another glass and drank it down in one breath. He hadn't quite expected to react as dramatically as he had, and as he set down the glass, he realized he was only one behind Starbuck in drinks; of course he was upset. He was drunk.

"That was unnecessary," he said, by way of apology, and turned. Starbuck was right behind him, obviously concerned. "I think that was the ambrosa speaking."

Starbuck just looked at him. "What were you talking about, with Sheba?"

The captain swallowed. "You won't like it."

"Tell me anyway."

"Mostly you, and ... Iblis."

"That Sheba," Starbuck said, in a tone he reserved for Cylons. "Look, it's not about you at all."

Starbuck's ability to lie decreased with alcohol.

"You can lie better than that," Apollo said, before he could edit himself. 

"Frak," Starbuck spat. "Look, you don't want to know."

"But I do."

"No, you really don't, Apollo."

"If it concerns you and it concerns me, of course I want to know! What do you expect, that I'll let you waste away to nothing and not want to help you? Are you out of your frakking mind?"

Apparently that was the key pass-phrase. Starbuck's eyes darkened and he drew a deep breath. "Yeah, I am. I'm frakkin’ insane; everyone thinks so. You shouldn't be pushing me, Apollo."

It was now his turn to say, "Wait a minute. That's not -" 

"I don't like myself much, these days. I think bad things, and I dream them. Every night, I get to live every frakkin’ doubt. And you want me to tell you? You don't want this darkness, Apollo; you're not made for it."

"And you are?" He had no idea where this was going. It was an abyss without charts, but at least they were talking. "That's feldercarb!"

"What kind of friend would I be, to share my pain?"

"What kind of friend would I be, to ignore it?" 

Starbuck shook his head, a flash a pain so intense in his eyes, that Apollo took him by the arm. 

"It's about me; I know it. You tell me everything. You told me about your first woman. You told me about your first death. You've told me everything, but this. So I know it's about me. It kills me to think I could help you, and didn't."

And, unexpectedly, Starbuck laughed, dropping his forehead to Apollo's shoulder.  
It was not happy laughter, and the shaking of his friend's shoulders heralded the shift from laughter to gasping.

And then Starbuck was holding onto him as if he was the last safe haven in spinning world. "I hate myself," he said into Apollo's shirt. "Why not you, too? At least it'd be out, right? Either way..."

Apollo held onto him, thunderstruck. "Hate yourself? What are you - ?"

"You won't leave me? Say you won't leave me. I couldn't stand it." Starbuck was degenerating by the second, mumbling, his face burrowed in Apollo's shoulder. 

"Of course I won't leave you," he soothed, sliding an arm about Starbuck's shoulders. "You know I couldn't."

"Oh, you could." Starbuck's laugh was a travesty, unpleasant and self-deprecating. "You can, when you know." He braced himself and pulled a bit away. His eyes were all pupil. He seemed one step from collapse, but his focus seemed unnaturally acute, staring straight into his friend's face, almost hungrily. 

Apollo's heart seemed to thump. "What is it?" he asked. "Tell me."

"You're right. It was Iblis; it was you, dead. I would have traded my life for you. I would have, but they brought you back, anyway. I thought I'd escaped; they hadn't taken anything from me."

"What are you saying? Did they take something from you?"

"Yeah, you could say that." Starbuck's stare was disconcerting. "More like, they gave me the ability to see what kind of person I really am; they stripped me down to my core and showed me what I was."

"Starbuck, what are you saying?"

His best friend shook his head. "Isn't that easy, really, to say it. Not with you looking at me with those green eyes of yours."

Apollo opened his mouth, not even knowing how to respond to such a strange announcement, but Starbuck was there already, and suddenly they were kissing.

It wasn't anything Apollo had known before, with his few lovers, all of them female. Starbuck was hard, greedy and tasted of 100-yahren ambrosa. Apollo, off-center already by alcohol and the revelations of the night, unaccountably yielded in this first moment, the first press and invasion. Later, he could not account for why he had reacted the way he had, except that his head was half-fuzzed with ambrosa, and his arms full of Starbuck, and nothing of that equation seemed unworthy or alien. Then it was past the possibility of thought, because he was hard, and Starbuck was hard, and they were locked together, tongues, arms and intentions. Oh, it had been so long, so long…

“Oh gods. Oh gods,” Starbuck gasped against his mouth. “It’s better, better than I dreamed…”

Apollo gasped for air, his body hot and vibrating, everything pooling into sweet. frustrating pain. Starbuck’s mouth explored under his ear; Apollo’s attention split between that fantastic sensation and the other, where they pressed together. He could see nothing. He could barely move.

“S-Starbuck,” he managed. He was never good at these moments; desire made him slow and stupid. He didn’t know how Serina had been able to stand his inability to press the advantage; well, perhaps he did. Serina had not been a shy lover.

Perhaps he had a penchant for lusting after those who outshone him, seeking to warm himself in their light.

Starbuck sagged against him, mumbling, and Apollo, half-minded to protest the liberties being attempted upon him, was paradoxically outraged.

Starbuck had, for the first time since Apollo had known him, succumbed to drink.

 

He was rubbing the bridge of his nose, smoothing imaginary worry creases, when the door slid open. He didn’t look up, his eyes scanning down the next secton’s patrol rotation. Silence prompted him to lift his head, to find Starbuck standing within the door, staring at him with suspicious, narrowed eyes.

“Mm. Starbuck? Didn’t you manage to escape a hangover?” When there was no change of expression, Apollo added more seriously: “Something I can do for you?”

“Why haven’t you thrown me into the brig?” the lieutenant demanded abruptly.

Apollo almost lurched forward in his chair, troublesome schedules forgotten at this startling question. “Why? Have you done something reprehensible? Been caught gambling again?” He was tempted to go on with the joke, but Starbuck was not responding.

“Last night,” Starbuck said, as if that explained everything.

Of course Apollo remembered last night, with all the accompanying details, but it he had also had a low threshold for emotional confrontations. He had automatically filed last night under “best forgotten.” Apparently, Starbuck had a different organizational structure.

He laughed, straight into denial. “How could you possibly get in trouble last night? You were passed out on my couch when I finally went to bed.”

Now his friend seemed more puzzled than surly. “I attacked you last night.”

What? Now that was entirely unexpected. “Funny, I don’t remember it, if you did. Was this a brawl? Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”

“Pretty damned sure.”

“You didn’t attack me, Starbuck.” Apollo gave him an affable smile. “No harm done, to either of us, I might add.” He stood and held his arms out, as if to say, all fine. Nothing damaged. “Were you worrying about a charge of attacking a superior officer? Nothing so dramatic, although it would definitely fill in a gap in your colorful record.”

“How about harassment of a superior officer?” Starbuck said, very seriously.

What had Starbuck actually remembered? “Harassment? Starbuck, you aren’t making any sense. Nothing happened last night.”

“Look, I wasn’t that drunk. I know that I…” Starbuck’s blue eyes looked suddenly wounded. “I did, didn’t I? Holy frak. No wonder you’re not admitting to it.”

Had it been a ruse, Apollo wondered, to feel out how much had actually happened? “Starbuck, I’ll say it again. Nothing happened. We drank. We got drunk. You crashed on me in the middle of a manly heart-to-heart. The end.”

“This resembles a fairy tale, except the lack of happily-ever-after,” Starbuck returned, mulishly. “Are you saying I didn’t kiss you?”

There it was. Damn. And now his friend was reading his hesitation like a book. “I’m not saying it,” he admitted, because he knew that a lie right now would set Starbuck off like a rocket. “Yes, there was a kiss. You seem to forget that it was mutual.”

“Riiiight,” his friend returned. “You would have volunteered that kiss, regardless, yeah? Just like that? Huh. That’s pretty funny, Apollo.”

Except neither of them were laughing.

“Perhaps you should secure the door,” the captain finally said, after a long moment of silence and a locking of gazes. 

But Starbuck shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I think that’s the last thing I ought to do, because you know, a locked door, that can only make things worse.”

“What things, Starbuck?! I don’t understand any of this!”

“Yeah, that’s pretty clear. You have no idea, do you, how thin a shield my honor is right now? How unscrupulous my dreams have been, and how I’d love to do what I dream of doing to you? Every night, I dream about it. With my best friend. How twisted is that? And now I’m awake, and it’s a waking dream.”

Apollo’s breath left him, and even his heart seemed to stop in that moment that all the words came together and made a single, clear meaning for him. Starbuck was talking about sex. About the two of them and sex.

“Do you want to frak me?” he asked, that damned counselor-voice repeating back key words.

Starbuck laughed, a short sound, as if he’d hit a wall. “Only you could come back after that one, all reasonable. Do you want to frak me? Holy ancestors, Apollo! Listen to yourself!”

Apollo tried not to cringe. “Well, one of us has to be rational about it.”

“I resent being the only one in this room who’s upset that I am one breath away from disregarding years of friendship for frakking.”

“Would you?” Apollo wondered aloud, working it out in his head. “Would you do that to me, like you would anyone else? Frak?”

Starbuck’s breath hissed. “Maybe you shouldn’t keep saying that word, ‘Pollo.”

“Why not? It’s in my vocabulary, like anyone else’s. I’m not inviolate, you know.”

“What – what are you exactly saying? Because from my end it sounds like you’re not protesting!”

Apollo glanced at his paperwork, frowning, then said, quietly. “I guess I’m not.”

Starbuck abruptly sat down in the nearest chair, thunderstruck. “You’re not.”

“I suppose not. I know I ought to be shocked at least, and I was at first, but I don’t feel what you feel. I don’t feel as if I should be defending my chastity, or that I should be berating you for what you feel. I just don’t feel it.”

Blue eyes, unguarded, stared into his across the desk. “Do you feel anything, then?”

Where had that tone come from, Apollo wondered, that soft, wounded tone? “Are you asking me if I still love you?”

Starbuck’s head fell forward, his blond hair obscuring his face. His hands came up, and unsteadily pressed his closed eyes. This orphan-turned-pilot was never one to express his feelings. “Yes,” he said in a barely-there voice.

“Starbuck, I still love you. You’re still my friend. This doesn’t change me.”

“Oh, gods,” his friend groaned. “I was so sure…” Still he did not lift his head.

Apollo rose slowly from the desk to kneel by his friend’s chair. “You thought I was going to abandon you because you want me? Is this where all the outrage is coming from?”

One hand fell and grabbed at his, bringing it to Starbuck’s wet cheek. “I’m so sorry,” he groaned. “I’m a fiend. I shouldn’t feel this way, or want this, and it’s driving me nuts.”

“I thought you liked it both ways,” Apollo said, innocently.

Starbuck choked out a laugh. “Not that, you idiot. It’s ‘cause we’re friends, and well, you don’t like it both ways. At least the last time we talked about it.”

“Starbuck,” Apollo murmured. “How am I supposed to be disgusted by this? I’ve seen the people you consider desirable. I should be honored to be part of that group.”

“Ah, hell,” Starbuck said with a deep breath, and straightened, still holding Apollo’s hand. “You don’t get it.”

“You’re right. I don’t get it. What am I missing?”

“Frakking and love aren’t the same. Not for me.”

Apollo froze, then took a long slow breath. “I see. Does this mean you don’t love me anymore? Is that where the change is?”

“I’m saying that…” Starbuck stopped, blinked. “Uh, I’m saying that I’m not a faithful sort of fellow, as you well know, and I don’t frak people because I’m in love with them. I – I don’t know where this fits in.”

Apollo stared at him, trying to divine his meaning. “Am I your best friend, or not, Starbuck? Because if I’m not, we have a whole other conversation needing to be hashed out.”

He gulped. “I-I’m hoping you’re still my best friend.”

“Does that mean you love me?”

Starbuck’s eyes slid away from his face. Lords of Kobol, Apollo thought, even now he couldn’t say it!

“Then I guess we do have a problem, lieutenant. Because, I do frak people because I’m in love with them. If you’re not willing to reciprocate with a fractional nod of your head, then there’s nothing left to say. You were right. I should be upset.” You’ve just tossed me out of your life, haven’t you, Starbuck? I should be the one crying now.

Finally, he was feeling it. It hurt. Standing from the unmoving pilot’s side, he stepped around to open the door, only to find his fingers locked in Starbuck’s, and his former friend’s blue eyes staring wildly at his under a fall of golden hair.

“What are you doing?” Starbuck asked hoarsely.

“Giving you the boot before this turns even more sour than has already become.” Even he could hear the coldness in his own voice, and saw his friend’s eyes widen. What did he see on Apollo’s face? “Let go,” he added, tugging his hand to free it from Starbuck’s.

“Lords, I wish I could,” came the reply, “but I couldn’t then, and I can’t now. Yes. All right? Yes. I love you. I love you. I love you. Do you hear me? Why do you make me say it?!”

Apollo was frozen in place, at both the admission he had never thought to hear in his life, and Starbuck’s distressed and broken face, his shaking hand. Slowly, he circled back and knelt in his original position, waiting for Starbuck to raise his head. “Starbuck,” he said. “You won’t ever have to say it again.”

“Thank you,” Starbuck said, surprisingly mild and civilized, then turned and leaned over to embrace him. “Thank you. I-I can’t…it hurts.”

The admission? Or the words? Apollo, not for the first time, wondered what it would feel like to have a past devoid of the warmth of those words spoken to him. He could never quite get a feel for how it must be to regard love as some painful, jarring obligation.

“All right,” Apollo said, and then fell silent, wondering. What now? It seemed they’d been talking in circles, and here was Starbuck, absolutely broken before him. 

“Could you, um…” Starbuck turned his head and wiped at his eyes. “…secure that door?”

Apollo almost gulped. He nodded. “Sure thing.” He stood, and this time Starbuck released him. Returning, he knelt next to his friend, reaching out a tentative hand to run his palm over Starbuck’s golden hair. “All right?”

Starbuck looked at him. Lords of Kobol, Apollo thought, no one had a right to such eyes, bluer than Caprica’s oceans (of which there were many). “Yeah, a little.” Those eyes dipped, and Apollo found himself drawing in a deep breath at that look. “Uh, that kiss…”

“Yes?”

“Was it any good?”

The captain had to laugh a little. Only Starbuck could combine hopeful and apologetic in the same tone. “I’d say pretty amazing, considering how much ambrosa we’d stockpiled in our bellies. And you had some one-liners that were effective.”

“Yeah?” Starbuck lifted up a little. “Like what?”

“You said I was better than you dreamed.”

Blue eyes widened. “Oh,” the lieutenant breathed. “I see.”

“I think that’s a fail-safe line, myself, guaranteed to move the heavens for man or maiden.”

“Did it… move you?” Starbuck licked his lips.

Apollo blinked. Oh, that was so unfair. He swallowed and managed a dry, “Oh, I’d say so.”

“Now, I think it’s dire tragic that I can’t remember much of anything,” his friend said, sitting up completely, and beginning to grin that old devil-may-care grin. 

“Just recompense for falling into a coma immediately after,” Apollo replied, with a distinct lack of ire.

Starbuck leaned closer, blue eyes intent. “Oh, how ungentlemanly of me,” he sighed, with a mock-sad shake of his head. “However shall I make it up to you?”

“Shall I let you think it over for the next centare? After all, there is all this paperwork to be filed…” He turned his head towards the desk and the next thing he knew, Starbuck had hooked a hand behind the nape of this neck and pulled into a lip-lock par none. “Oh, Lords, yes,” he groaned. If practice had made Starbuck’s technique, Apollo would not resent the experience that had resulted in this perfection. 

Starbuck was anything but gentle – perhaps gentle had been bypassed with talk. What he was was thorough. He held Apollo’s skull in his hand and guided everything: pressure, angle, substance. And when his tongue had scrupulously explored every possible variation on kissing, Starbuck pulled him in his arms and heaved him upward and around against the desk, and used his body as yet another method of attack. 

Apollo remembered that hard bulge against his own, but he could not imagine being this breathless and unhinged by it. Starbuck merely shifted until they were pressed hard against one another, and his hips circled, ever-so-minutely. 

Oh, frak. There was no turning back from that. Apollo shuddered, and tried not to whimper. He tried. What came out was part-sob, part-groan. 

“My gods,” Starbuck murmured huskily, “you’re so hot for this. How long has it been?”

“Forever,” Apollo whispered, mortified and aroused and almost in a panic. It couldn’t happen; he couldn’t come…here, now…that didn’t happen outside of fantasies, but by the Lords, his body seemed to be in a state of denial. “S-Starbuck, please…” Starbuck’s hand had strayed, and fingers were beginning to explore along the ridge of his crotch through the fabric of his uniform pants. “.. .stop…”

“Stop…?” The lieutenant said it as if he had to explore the word, as if it were foreign. “…but you’re so hard.” The tone seemed less mockery and more reverence and awe. “Why do you want to stop?”

“Here…?” Apollo’s mouth felt dry; he could barely speak. 

“The door’s locked, sweetheart. Do you really want to stop? Because I could really enjoy easing you.”

Ah, frakking frak. Absolutely unfair! Apollo had lost all speech, and could only whimper.

Starbuck took that rightly for consent, and pushed him back against the desk. With a kiss, he descended to ease him right out of the confines of his pants with sure fingers, murmuring in admiration even as Apollo was groaning in relief. 

“Lords, you’re gorgeous,” Starbuck grated. Was his voice a bit breathless, his hands less sure? Apollo was beyond caring. “So frakking hard and I haven’t even touched you…”

Lords of Kobol, let me not disgrace myself, Apollo begged silently. “I hadn’t noticed,” he managed breathlessly, biting off an inconvenient moan. “You can’t tease me; it’s been too long.”

Starbuck paused, frowning, glancing up into his eyes. Something seemed to click and the frown eased, replaced by sadness. “Oh, ‘Pollo, that long?”

Apollo closed his eyes. It wasn’t shame; he didn’t know what it was. “You don’t have to tell me; I know.” He turned his head, not wanting to see the repercussions of this embarrassing confession. “It’s just – when she died, everything else did, too.”

A true, silent pause followed, pregnant of with tension; it forced Apollo to turn and look. Starbuck still looked sad, but also now dismayed, his blue eyes wide. “Everything?” he repeated.

“Lords, Bucko, not everything.” Reaching up, he hooked his fingers about the back of Starbuck’s neck and tugged him down. “There’s my family, and you, Boomer and flying, but that’s all there is anymore.” He pushed blond hair with his other hand. “You’ve stopped,” he pointed out and experimentally pouted.

“Uh, yeah.” Starbuck blinked, a slow grin transforming his previous thoughtful expression. “Can’t have that now, can we?” He pressed a brief kiss that left Apollo momentarily puzzled until the lieutenant sank to the floor, his hands making efficient work of pulling down Apollo’s pants. 

Apollo stared, licking at his lips unconsciously. Lust, which was always so slow to claim him, lurched forward at the sight of Starbuck intently baring him, and then Starbuck curved a warm hand around him and Apollo gasped, winded by such a small thing, his friend’s hand holding him. Apollo’s fingers tightened on the edge of his desk.

“So,” Starbuck said, sounding a little breathless, “I’m a little rusty at this, just so you know. My learning curve, though, well… you know about my learning curve.”

“Y-yes,” Apollo stammered, finding any words surreal at this point. “I…uh, have every confidence in you.”

Starbuck chuckled, and his breath puffed against the head of Apollo’s shaft. Then without hesitation, he opened his mouth and took him down, his tongue caressing with firm pressure underneath. Apollo could not look away, eyes wide and breath straining, clutching at the edge of the desk as if he could fly right off of it if he didn’t hold on with Death’s grip. It wasn’t that this had never been offered to him before, or that he didn’t recall how it felt, but the sensation-memory had certainly faded because he couldn’t remember feeling like this, as if he would combust.

Then Starbuck pressed his thumb just behind Apollo’s balls, and Apollo’s sight whited out, his hand somehow found its way to Starbuck’s hair; Starbuck chuckled knowingly, as if it had all been a nefarious plan, and began to earnestly suck.

Apollo would be embarrassed at his own panting and groaning if it wasn’t for the amazing pleasure that somehow seemed much more important than self-consciousness. Starbuck drew back and nursed at the head before backing off, and Apollo blinked and swallowed, dazed, and so hard that it hurt. “Starbuck…”

His friend rose up, grabbing him roughly by the shoulders and kissing him urgently; Apollo clutched back just as desperately, biting at Starbuck’s lips and moaning in desperation.

“That’s more like it,” Starbuck muttered against his mouth. “I’m going to give you what you need, sweetheart, and you need it so badly.”

Apollo huffed his indignation and cuffed him on the shoulder weakly as Starbuck laughed. He stopped laughing when Apollo attacked the closures to his pants and quickly, both of them were pressed together, fighting for the dominant grip between them.

“Told you… not to tease me…” Apollo panted, nipping at Starbuck’s grinning mouth. The blond ducked away and nibbled against his throat, then sucked hard, and Apollo seized, lips dropping over and gasping as he came into Starbuck’s fist.

“Oh, frak,” Starbuck grunted, not that far behind him, and suddenly was supporting both of their weights against the edge of the desk.

A comfortable stillness followed. “You said you were a bit rusty?” Apollo managed after a few moments, when their breathing had calmed down.

“The male thing; it’s been a while,” his friend murmured, tucking his face into Apollo’s neck, clearly not in any hurry to move and making himself comfortable. “Why?”

“If that’s ‘rusty,’ I would be more than happy to make training runs on the even more esoteric stuff,” Apollo commented philosophically to the cap of blond hair against his chin.

He could feel Starbuck’s lip twitch against his throat. “All right,” his friend mumbled. Was that a yawn? “Sleep first.”

“Yes?” Apollo asked hopefully. 

“Lots and lots of sleep. In a bed. Your bed. Now?”

Was that a pathetic whine? “Hey, you insisted on the office. I made a valiant effort--” A pause. “Starbuck? Hey, Starbuck, wake the frak up!”  
Black space and a star field. Mother’s milk, Starbuck would say. 

“…and the daggit sleeps so deeply that one of the cadets managed to arrange his arms like an ancestral sarcophagus, and you know how they are. The next thing I know, someone’s rigged a crook and flail out of eating utensils and foil,” Boomer complained, his voice intimate in the pickup in Apollo’s helmet.

Apollo tries not to laugh, but it’s no use. He can picture his best friend, his lover, as the victim of good-humored pranks. “Retribution.”

“Yeah?”

“Who do you think used to put flour into our helmets if we didn’t secure them?”

“That was Starbuck?! Of course it was Starbuck. Hell, I’m going to find some gold paint and kohl and help the cadets along. Do you know there was that one time I had a hot date right after my patrol, and while I was washing that stuff out of my hair…”

Apollo smiled in the darkness of his cockpit, listening to Boomer’s lighthearted chatter, so much more at ease than the tense discussion a mere secton ago. In less than another secton, he and Starbuck would be back on long patrols together, loneliness banished and now nightmares banished.

He didn’t know exactly what Starbuck and Sheba had seen or experienced after the battle with Iblis, reality or dreams. He thought he’d never really know for sure. Sheba seemed to think it was a test, a test of choices. Starbuck was convinced it was a test of truth. 

In some ways, they had both been right. Starbuck had chosen, and been given the truth. Even if his choice had been in a dream and the truth in a nightmare, in the end it had given them the ideal: love that was grounded in friendship, passion inflamed by adoration. Something of a miracle, really.

You couldn’t ask the universe for more than that.

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Here's to my first OTP. If we'd had the term "bromance" in the 70's, I would have been all over that like a cheap coat.


End file.
